WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara, moving to cut financial support for his rival, warned yesterday that oil and cocoa firms may have to pay export taxes twice if they continued sending funds to Laurent Gbagbo’s government.
Ouattara, speaking via teleconference from his Abidjan hotel, also told a Washington think tank he wanted to tighten sanctions imposed by the regional central bank on Gbagbo’s government and expand travel restrictions on Gbagbo’s allies.
“We’ve had several meetings with the major petroleum companies abroad and also with .. . all these cocoa business companies to tell them that if they pay export taxes to the Gbagbo government we will consider that these taxes are due when the situation is normalized,” he said. “So they should not pay taxes to the Gbagbo government.”
Ouattara was the U.N.-recognized winner of the Nov. 28 presidential runoff election against Gbagbo, who has led the Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, since 2000 and survived a 2002 coup attempt and subsequent civil war.
Ouattara told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that Gbagbo’s financial controller had been able to remove $10 million from the central bank recently despite sanctions to block Gbagbo’s access to the funds. Ouattara said the bank’s governor, national director and deputy national director had not given clear instructions to local banks on how to deal with Gbagbo’s government.
“We have written to the governor and we have told them that if they continue we will ask the European Union, the U.S. and the U.N. to put them on the list of people to be sanctioned,” Ouattara said.
He said the central bank should tell local banks only to recognize the Ouattara government’s signature because banks allied with Gbagbo were continuing to provide funds for his administration.
Ouattara said he also wanted foreign banks, including U.S. and European banks, to direct their branches in the Ivory Coast “not to deal with the illegitimate government of Mr. Gbagbo.”
While voicing a desire to resolve the situation peacefully, Ouattara said he was becoming convinced that Gbagbo was stalling for time while increasing his military strength and would ultimately have to be forced from power.
“We have come to the point where I seriously believe that force should be used to remove Mr. Gbagbo,” Ouattara said.”
Any decision to remove Gbagbo by force would likely be initiated by the militaries of the Economic Community of West African States, which has been divided on how to proceed. ECOWAS military chiefs are due to meet again next week.
“I believe it’s time to really remove Mr. Gbagbo,” said Ouattara, adding that he thought it could be done relatively easily. “I’m counting on the ECOWAS decision to do so.”
